I distinctly remember learning the stages of the writing process in elementary school. I was forced to create lists, graphs, and flow charts filled with ideas for prewriting. I had to edit a certain amount of my writing between drafts in order to get credit. There were multiple check points throughout the process and in the end, I had four or five different drafts of one piece of writing. Initially, I thought this process was crazy. Today, I still find this process to be crazy. I respect the art of revision and brainstorming, but such rigid and structured steps aren’t beneficial to the writer, in my opinion. Allowing the writer to go where they wish with their writing will create a strong piece because they are writing what they want to write, not what is being required. I began to stray from the traditional writing process in middle school and completely abandoned it by high school, but I replaced it with my own personal writing process. Embracing my own way of creating made me fall in love with writing, whereas I used to dread going through the same patterns and steps that were on a brightly colored poster that looked something like this:
Most of my prewriting and brainstorming comes from readings. When I find something interesting, I highlight it and revisit it often. Just by thinking about it more, my mind creates more connections and arguments that I occasionally map out in margins or on a separate sheet of paper. Once I get an idea of what I want to say, I sit down and write it all out in one session. I know this isn’t ideal for many, but it seems to work best for me. I then take some time away from the piece and revisit it a few days later. When I read it through, I edit, remove, and add pieces that I think are important to the overall meaning of what I’m writing. Sometimes in this stage (for lack of a better word), I end up rewriting the entire piece and creating something new with a different meaning. The first few times this happened, I truly hated myself for scrapping something I had already spent so much time on. I could’ve finished the piece and left it as is, but I really felt I had something else to say. When this happens now, I get excited. I love being able to create new ideas and connections from my own writing. Though I can’t say it’s a goal of mine to have every piece go through a couple different lives, I do genuinely find joy in rebuilding an almost-finished piece from scratch. Once I have the content to where I want it, I print a hard copy and do the copy editing, notating punctuation, spelling, etc.
My writing process is very similar to the “traditional” one I learned in elementary school, but it’s custom fit to my writing style. I never feel pressured to spend a certain amount of time on any specific part of the writing process; instead I move naturally as I see fit and as most beneficial to the piece. This is reminiscent of the Flower and Hayes piece in which they discuss monitors of the writing process, “The monitor functions as a writing strategist which determines when the writer moves from one process to the next….this choice is determined by the writer’s goals and by individual writing habits or styles” (374). The monitor is a big role to play when writing; it’s one that takes a lot of trial and error to master.
When writing in a digital setting, the monitor in me tends to move at a quicker pace than when I’m writing in a traditional setting. Something about the digital world makes me want to pick up the pace and move along. It’s nice having spelling and grammar checkers on your side in digital writing, but I feel that, personally, I tend to trail off more in digital writing than in traditional settings. I’m very concerned with the quality of my content in a traditional setting, whereas I tend to focus on the quantity of my content in digital settings. I think this is a widely accepted way of viewing digital composition. Take YouTubers, for example. Most YouTubers put out videos several times a week in order to keep their subscribers entertained and happy. While the videos are of good quality, it’s easy to say that they could be of higher quality if the YouTuber chose to put out fewer videos. YouTuber Colleen Ballinger once addressed this and chose to take a step back form YouTube to heal from an injury instead of posting frequent videos. By focusing on smaller amounts of composition, creators have more time to pay attention to detail and really ensure that they are publishing something spectacular. With digital composition, I think people tend to lean towards more content of high quality. I don’t mean to say that digital composers aren’t creating quality content, because that is not true at all. But when there is more to focus on, it’s harder to get into the details. Digital composition is a growing commodity and it’s a face paced environment, as well.
Madeline Stollenwerk 